Bat Activities for the Classroom

We are going batty for bats with these bat activities in our classroom!  Nocturnal animals are one of my favorite units to teach. There are so many engaging math and literacy activities to do with your students.

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Bat Activities for the Classroom

Before we really dive into learning about bats, I like to understand how my students feel about bats. We take a poll, choosing if we think bats are helpful or harmful. 

Favorite Bat Books

Kids love bat books, and luckily there are a lot of great books out there (fiction and nonfiction) that you can pull into your bat unit. Check out some of the bat books we use with our unit.

• Bats by Gail Gibbons
• Bats (Nocturnal Animals)
• Bats Creatures of the Night
• Bats (Time For Kids)
• Bats at the Beach
• Stellaluna
• National Geographic Readers: Bats
• Zipping, Zapping, Zooming Bats
• Magic School Bus Truth About Bats
• Bat Loves the Night

Stellaluna is the anchor fiction text we use during our bat unit. We dive deep into this book and look closely at vocabulary and story structure. We also practiced sequencing events in the story. You can read more about our Stellaluna Interactive Read-aloud here.

What are some of your favorite bat books that you like to read with your students? 

Batty Breakfast

Bats eat a lot of mosquitos each night. In order to demonstrate the amount that they eat, we have a batty breakfast day!  Batty breakfast is a great activity to give students a visual as to how many mosquitoes a brown bat may eat in an hour.  Do you know how many?  Some scientists say up to 600 mosquitoes an hour.  That is a lot! We break our students into six groups. Each group is given a paper plate and a paper with 100 mosquitoes on it.  They need to work together as a group to cut apart their mosquitoes and glue them onto the plate.  When each group is done, we have six plates with 100 mosquitoes on each plate. What a great math lesson!

Would you like some mosquitoes to make your own batty breakfast?  Click here for your yummy mosquitoes!

Interactive Notebooks

I try to dedicate 1-2 days per week to work in our interactive notebooks. You can read more about interactive notebooks here. My kids love these!  Here are some of the activities you will find in the Bats interactive notebook pack.

There are many great vocabulary words to expose your little ones to when you are teaching about bats.  I always emphasize that we are scientists and need to learn robust words.  They eat that up!

Sorts are a fun way to make your books interactive.  You can also use them as an assessment tool.  Watch your students sort the pieces and see if they are sorting them correctly.

Bat Math Activities

In our math tubs, we have math activities that are bat and nocturnal animal-themed. These activities provide a review of the math concepts we have been working on in class.

Find the 1st grade Nocturnal Animal Math Centers here

Bat Art

We have an amazing art teacher at our school! She does this bats-at-night art project each year that I absolutely love!

More Bat  and Nocturnal Animal Resources

As you can see, we are definitely going batty for bats in our classroom! If you are looking for more bat activities for the classroom, check these out!

• Nocturnal Animals Interactive Notebook
• All About Bats Nonfiction Resource
• Nocturnal Animal Research Report
• Nocturnal Animal Words